Picture the scene. One of Evgeny Lebedev’s underlings calls a staff meeting at the Evening Standard.

“Well comrades, there’s good news, and there’s bad news. The good news is, all your hard work has trebled pre-tax-profits to £3.4 million, and online readership is up by 24 per cent against last year. The bad news is, we’re cutting your hours and pay.”

This meeting didn’t happen. But if it did, I think the two-bearded Russian climber should have broken the news. Assuming he wasn’t holiday, as he was when he closed the Independent.

Yet the socialite Putin cheerleader is presiding over a profitable newspaper being scaled down to one print edition per day, cutting sub-editors’ work and pay in half and reporters down to a four-day week.

Photo: Lebedev and pal Boris slumming it

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said more than 30 members of staff could be affected, with all reporters and full-time sports editors being sent letters ‘offering’ the loss of a day’s work and pay.

Sub-editors are faced with less than six hours of work per day – saving the millionaire Lebedev having to provide them a lunch break. Most page editors and sub-editors will be working the socialable hours of 7.30 to 11.30.

But don’t worry. As the letter from managing editor Doug Wills cooed:

“We are confident that this decision will not detrimentally affect the editorial excellence that Evening Standard readers expect.”

Phew!

Thankfully, NUJ national organiser Laura Davison is having none of it:

“This is a huge blow to the loyal staff on the Standard who must take credit for this profitable newspaper’s recent success. It will also have a huge impact on the coverage of news for its readers.

The management must be living in cloud cuckooland to say that editorial excellence will not be affected.

They have made a mockery of any meaningful consultation. The one-edition only newspaper is already on the streets as staff wait to hear their fate.”

She adds:

“The editor Sarah Sands may have a new safe berth at Radio 4’s Today programme, but how are her staff expected to survive on half their pay?

It is a travesty that one of the greatest capitals of the world cannot enjoy a rich, vibrant and varied press.”

The NUJ is calling on worried Standard staff to get in touch via publishing@nuj.org.uk, and will be taking the matter up at the London Assembly economics committee’s inquiry into local news provision next month.

In the meantime, it looks as if two-beards Lebedev is working hard on destroying his second British newspaper in the space of year. His hero in the Kremlin would be proud!

Adam Barnett is staff writer for Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter @AdamBarnett13

Fred

If Adam Barnett owned a business, he’d have the happiest staff on the planet. For the year until it went bust. Taking all his money with it. Actually, he wouldn’t run a business with his money, he’d use other people’s money -like a true socialist. He’d just lose their money and blame someone else.

If it wasn’t for Lebedev’s ownership, the ES would have gone bust years ago and then there would be no jobs at all. That’s conveniently forgotten by Adam Barnett.

Secondly, it’s being scaled down to one edition a day as there isn’t the demand for more than one. It’s a fact of business life, Mr Barnett -you don’t produce what people don’t want. Journalists’ hours are being cut because there isn’t the work for them with just one edition. Fact of life, No 2, Mr Barnett -a business doesn’t pay people to do work that isn’t required.

Of course, socialists love to produce what people don’t want, don’t need, don’t buy. Look at the British car industry in the 1970s. Fields of cars that couldn’t be sold, produced by a company that lost shedloads of money, supported by other people’s cash. But lots of people were employed! Brilliant.

You read articles like this and you just know that the writer has no commercial or economic awareness. He has a generalized idea that he wants ‘workers’ to share a company’s profits but he wants the owner to bear all the risk. It’s the complete opposite of how the real world works: speculators bear risk to secure outsize rewards, employees bear little/no risk and so reap relatively little reward.